QUOTE (Chefelf @ Nov 28 2003, 10:35 AM)
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Los Angeles officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms "master" and "slave" on computer equipment, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive.
That's brilliant, that is.
I have always said, employees with the time to initiate bullshit claims of harassment and ill treatment have too much time on their hands and obviously have not been given enoough work to do. Of course, I have also always said that by and large they are not paid enough, so they deserve to slack off.
I was in a comic book store (I think I can get away with admitting that, here) and they had for sale one of those life-sized cardboard stand-up pictures of a Star Trek character. You know the ones. You see them in a store and they're so big and pointless you figure they have to be a display, not a product available for purchase. So this comic book store owner made a cardstock cartoon bubble that he had coming out of the character's mouth saying "Yes, I'm for sale!" to make sure any real hardcore idiots with loads of space at home would know that, for $15, they coud take this bastard home with them.
Well, to make the point clear, the character was Jordie LaForge. So I'm standing around lokking at, I don't know, Ninja Turtle Dolls (sad), when this black lady starts screaming to the girl at the cash counter (who happened to be a friend of mine) that she finds that cut-out offensive. See, apparently, there was a period in history, more than a hundred years ago, when black people were traded as slaves, and the actor playing Jordie, Lavarr Burton, is a black man (he also starred in ROOTS).
It actually took a moment for my friend even to realize what the woman was screaming about, since of course it made no sense whatsoever (we never even had a slave trade in Canada), and this gave the lady time to get worked up into a righteous fury. So much so that all of the following were ignored:
a) "We put that text bubble on all the STAR TREK figures, including the white people;
If that connection had ever occurred to us, do you think we'd have done this?;
c) Your screaming is making me very uncomfortable; and
d) This is a conversation you should be having with my manager.
It was becoming pretty obvious that this woman was not from Vancouver.
I was getting really worked up just watching it happen, but I thought the girl was really holding her own, despite massive ignorance, and I didn't want to jump in and undermine her authority. Or worse, make it worse. Besides, she was a friend of mine, and I thought management might know this, so anything I said might be held against her. Meanwhile I could see the store manager, standing about ten feet away, not moving. He waited until the lady walked out, waving her arms, proclaiming she'd never shop there again, that she'd tell all her friends, and that this girl (not even the store, or the figure, but the girl!) had ruined her day. Then he sauntered up and asked "what was that all about?" to which my friend said "That woman just wanted to tell you that it's time for my break. You're on cash now." And she walked out and we ate lunch.
Some people.
PS: BTW, she still works there, from time to time, in between PA gigs.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).